Processing a Regrettable Incident
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
A five-step repair conversation for after a bad fight — one where the Four Horsemen thundered through. It is not a re-litigation of the original issue; it is a conversation about how you communicated and what went wrong in the way you communicated, ending in an apology that is actually informed. Each partner names their feelings, narrates their own point of view (both are valid, even if they feel like opposite planets), summarises and validates the other's, then surfaces the older triggers underneath — abandonment, rejection, feeling judged, feeling frightened — and tells the story from the past that explains the scar. The final step is behavioural: one thing I can do differently and one thing you can do differently next time. Timing is load-bearing: never immediately after, and only when both partners are calm enough to watch the fight like a play from the upper balcony.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Wait until you are genuinely calm
Do not process immediately afterwards. The Gottmans use a list of 50-60 feelings in their booklet to open the conversation, but only once both partners can discuss the incident from the emotional distance of the upper balcony of a theatre after act one of a play.
Pro tip You know an incident still needs processing if it festers when you think about it and you can still feel the awful feelings — even 15 or 20 years later.
Watch out Processing while still hot means you slide right back into the original fight.
- 2
Each person names their feelings
Each partner states, out loud, the feelings they had during the incident. The Gottmans hand couples a printed list of around 50-60 feelings and each person reads out any that applied to them.
Pro tip The Gottmans report they have never had anyone — man or woman — fail to name a feeling from the list.
- 3
Narrate your own point of view — then summarise and validate theirs
Each person presents their subjective account of what transpired. There are always two points of view and they can feel like opposite planets; both are valid and both are right. The listener then summarises what they just heard and gives a few words of validation: 'I get it, I can see how you would have felt that way.'
Watch out Correcting your partner's account of their own experience collapses the step back into the fight.
- 4
Name what got triggered — and tell the story behind it
Each person identifies the older feelings that surfaced during the incident: abandonment, rejection, feeling judged, feeling frightened — feelings that may date back to childhood or a former relationship. Share one story from your past that goes with the trigger so your partner understands the scars you carry and can try to avoid hitting them.
- 5
Agree one change each
Close by naming one thing you can do differently and one thing your partner can do differently to prevent something like this happening again. Only now does an apology carry meaning, because you finally know what you're apologising for.
Pro tip Keep it to one behaviour each — specific and small enough to actually execute next time.
In the wild
After a fight that ended in sarcasm and silence, a couple deliberately does not talk about it that evening. Four days later, calm, they sit down with the feelings list. She names hurt and dismissed; he names attacked and ashamed. Each tells their version; each summarises the other's back and says 'I can see how you'd have felt that way.' He realises his trigger was feeling judged, a feeling he has carried since childhood, and tells the story. She commits to raising issues as a positive need; he commits to calling a break instead of going silent. The apology lands because it names the actual impact.
→ The incident stops festering and both partners leave with one concrete behaviour change each.
Common mistakes
Apologising immediately
A fast apology doesn't work because you haven't heard your partner's experience of the fight, so you don't actually know what you're apologising for or how your behaviour landed.
Processing while still upset
It is far too easy to slide straight back into the old argument. Calm is a precondition, not a nice-to-have.
Arguing about whose version is true
There are always two points of view and both are valid. Treating the step as a fact-finding hearing destroys the validation it depends on.
From the transcript
“and we have a five-step process for this where each person names their feelings that they had during the regrettable incident”
“well it can be um whenever as long as it's not immediately afterwards”
“a lot of people will apologize almost immediately and that doesn't work either and the reason is because you haven't heard your partner's experience of…”
From the episode
The Difference Between Healthy and Toxic Relationships